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Sunday, 31 March 2013

Gilligan’s Hacked Off Goof

[Update at end of post]

Clearly not fully occupied by his Mayoral sinecure, Andrew “transcription error” Gilligan has turned
his attention to the campaigning group Hacked
Off, obediently penning a hatchet job for today’s Sunday Telegraph in defence of that free speech which does not
extend to the Telegraph titles ever
mentioning their owners David and Frederick Barclay (aka The Fabulous Bingo
Brothers).

“The
truth about Hacked Off’s media coup” proclaims the headline, which,
given Gilligan’s previously transient relationship with those pesky things
called facts, should put anyone reading the article on their guard. A number of
dubious assertions about the relationship between Hacked Off and the Leveson Inquiry follow, and then we get to the
main Gilligan villain: the “authoritarian
Left”.

Who they? Well, there are a number of academics, who as any
fule kno are all rotten lefties, apart from Tim Luckhurst of course, because he
says what Gilligan wants to hear. All other academics’ views and selective
quotations are then projected on to Hacked
Off. And, just to make sure, anyone speaking in favour of Hacked Off automatically becomes a “supporter” with their views also duly
projected.

At one point, there is a jaw-dropping logic leap as Gilligan
takes one supporter’s view that newspapers should reflect “a fair selection of the day’s events” and proclaims “a regulator, in other words, would decide
what stories they covered”. It’s a cracker! Then readers are told of an
event whose speakers – you guessed it – have their opinions duly selected and
projected on to Hacked Off.

“Most of the
organisation’s staff and those credited on its website are firmly of the Left”
says Gilligan of Hacked Off, before,
er, finding one who is a Labour
member. But not to worry, Brian Cathcart once expressed a pro-European
viewpoint, so another leap of logic and he becomes a leftie too! And a firm supporting Hacked Off
is run by someone who used to work for Tone, so, er, well, so what?

And then come the howlers. Gilligan claims that Martin Moore
of the Media Standards Trust (MST) is a director of Hacked Off (he isn’t), that the MST launched FullFact (it didn’t)
and the MST “as early as 2009, long
before the scandal broke, declared the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) unfit
for purpose – claiming, without much evidence, that its ‘ineffectiveness’ had
reduced trust in the media”.

A word in your shell-like, Gillers: 2009 was when the
scandal broke. And the PCC was indeed ineffective – as well as absent – as Phonehackgate
blew up in the face of the Fourth Estate. “This
was a sort of coup, by people even more unaccountable and unrepresentative than
the average newspaper owner” says Gilligan of Hacked Off. Like the owners you can’t mention? He does talk the
most unmitigated crap.

So Gilligan’s still having problems, even with Google. No change there, then.

[UPDATE 1 April 1010 hours: just to give a more rounded picture of The Great Gilligan, I'd commend to anyone wanting to know the discovery made by the Guardian's Dave Hill a while back that the man from the Tel was sockpuppeting. Hill's discovery was of a sockpuppet called Kennite.

In what sense is Gilligan's reputation destroyed? He still seems to hold down a job and write for a national newspaper. Huhne is an example of a reputation destroyed, not Gilligan. Ireland is sadly deluded about the whole topic, what makes you think that his copyright plundering effort helps you to make your case?

Hon Commentnaut? I think you are lapsing into passive/aggressive language here, a sure sign you are losing the argument.

The transcription error was what landed Gilligan in trouble with the Hutton Inquiry.

It has to do with his notes being "incomplete", and that his story about the Iraq dossier could therefore not be relied upon to be accurate.

What Gilligan also does not tend to let on is that he had been briefing members of a Select Committee in order to pressure David Kelly. The one who usually gets it in the neck on the subject of Kelly's alleged suicide is Alastair Campbell.

In summary, Gilligan has form for selective disclosure and dishonesty.